Posts by Richard Aston
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Speaker: Key: Concession Not Recession, in reply to Rachel Lang,
I would love it to work, but this feels like a razzle-dazzle distraction from our real woes.
Of course it is that's the whole point of Grahams post, IMHO. A NZ film industry telling our stories, looking at the world from our own unique point of view would be fantastic.
Selling our locations, crews and talent to Hollywood to create what ever the Hollywood machine deems is popular is effectively selling our sovereignty our national soul.Yeah maybe the economics could work , more film industry people employed for longer but what will that do to Independence film production in NZ . Maybe we can do both I dunno but it worries me we might gain money but loose something intangible but far reaching in terms of identity .
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Mr Key said ceding national sovereignty to the American film industry was a small price to pay for a new cycleway which can now be expanded to take donkey carts to become a crucial part of the country’s transport network in the next two decades
Brilliant.
Why hadn’t we thought about this before.
Perhaps the Wellintonian Elite were prescient in building that Welly Wood sign . -
Great television and man Stewart is on fire !
Good lesson for NZ perhaps - with that level of bullshit going down those that can see it need to shout loud (very) and clear or the bullshit will win . -
I watched the same Native Affairs show, it was good television and Julian Wilcox is one sharp interviewer. He managed to nail the smooth talking Bill English without malice but with considerable skill . He's good.
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Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to Russell Brown,
I would also note that this statistic does not demonstrate benefit capture.
Whats that?
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Interesting the phrase "Nanny State" has not been resurfaced by the media - the degree of proposed intervention in families is surely deep enough to qualify .
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Thanks Emma for the prompt to put in a submission here is mine just submitted.
I am a marriage celebrant and also run a social agency, Big Buddy, matching male mentors with fatherless boys in life long father figure relationships.
In the ten years I have doing this work I am humbled by what I see as an innate human need to care for each other and to be care for. It’s a primary part of our humanity and the very fabric of the web we call community.
Marriage between two people is in my view a reflection of this innate need to care and a contributes very strong thread in our web of community.
I can see no evidence, have no experience that tells me that marriage need be only between different sexes for it to take it’s place in this web of human caring. Gender makes no difference to love and love has no interest in gender.
So to preclude same sex couples from formalizing their commitment to love and caring is both irrational and at odds with our common humanity, our need to care and our need to strengthen the web of community. And no, a civil union does not serve this need in a truly egalitarian way.
We are all in this together, we need to build and strengthen the web of community together, in whatever ways we can find. My submission is by allowing same sex couples exactly the same opportunity of marriage as everyone else we can only but strengthen community and in the process build a better world for generations to come. -
Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to Sacha,
it's all relative
Ok good spotting Sacha .. well whanau is whanau but we have very tight boundaries around work and politics. Whanau is way more important than politics which is why we have such good boundaries.
So I am on my own with getting information here.
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Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to Sacha,
Or Richard, the answers should be easier for you to get than the rest of us. :)
???
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I’m trying to get a context for those numbers quoted on Nine to Noon.
Over here MSD says there are 234,632 children ( aged 0 -18 ) “dependent on recipients of a main benefit” . The average family size in NZ is around 2.2 so thats 106,600 families dependant on a benefit, in whole or part. Considering a fair portion are solo parents it would be a stretch to double that figure to get the number of parents but I’d gues its less than 150 – 170,000 parents on all main benefits. Seems like pretty well all of them have been on benefits forever .